The Saturday Evening Post May/June 2019

All the planning in the world can’t prepare you for the moment when you’re required to do something completely new. Whether starting a job (or quitting one to pursue a lifelong dream), beginning a new relationship, or even taking up a new sport — what’s finally required to make that commitment is a leap of faith. We fear failure. We fear the unknown. As the decisive moment approaches, the thought often comes unbidden: “Help! I don’t really know how to do this!” Yet it is our willingness to put ourselves through experiences like these that allows us to grow. In “My First Patient” (page 40), psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb describes the anxiety of her first solo experience with a real patient. Prior to this, she’d been through years of coursework, participated in role-play simulations,…

Bill Newcott “Like millions of youngsters, I was obsessed with the Apollo program in the 1960s, but by the time I became space science editor at National Geographic in the mid-1990s, NASA had moved on from the Apollo years — but even then I’d hear whispers of missing moon rocks,” says Newcott, who introduces us, in “The Moon Rock Hunter” (page 44), to the NASA investigator whose mission is to track down the missing lunar artifacts. “I always wanted to know what became of them, and thanks to this assignment, now I know!” Lori Gottlieb After completing graduate studies in clinical psychology, Gottlieb exited the classroom for the waiting room, working with real people with real problems — an experience she shares in “My First Patient” (page 40). “It amazes me that someone…

Play It Again I enjoy reading the Post very much, most recently “What’s Old Is Viewed Again” (Mar/Apr). My husband and I enjoy the old TV shows on MeTV, Antenna, and others — whether comedies, Westerns, mysteries, or drama. Much better than the prime-time shows or so-called reality programs (what a farce!). Thanks for a great magazine. Shirley Shusta, online comment Road Show I inherited a love of automotive travel from my father, and Richard Ratay’s article “Driving into the Future” (Mar/Apr), on the growth of the U.S. highway system, really resonated with me. I traveled with my parents in our new ’39 Ford coupe to California and Oregon and cherish memories of that trip. We didn’t have enough relatives to visit all along the way, but there was a mattress in the trunk…

Rolf Zinkernagel, a Swiss immunologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996, believes that the lifespan of human beings has far exceeded what it was intended to be: “I would argue that we are basically built to reach 25 years of age. All the rest is luxury.” Wealthy older people spend a lot of time and money maintaining their health and postponing death. Dinner-party conversations center on colonoscopies, statins (drugs which reduce blood cholesterol), and new diets. Many Americans who are not doctors subscribe to the New England Journal of Medicine. I have noticed a similar trend in well-off, older acquaintances of mine: health, and its maintenance, has become their hobby. All quite laudable, but let’s take this trend to its logical conclusion. What are the consequences…

Maybe it’s rude, but I pay a ridiculous amount of attention to wrists. Why? Watches. The daily decision about what wristwatch to wear says a lot about who you are, it seems to me. Yeah, I’m judgmental. Until recently, the choice was binary: your watch was either mechanical or quartz. Mechanical timepieces, especially at the higher end, tend to showcase remarkable engineering and design. Quartz watches feature greater accuracy, require batteries for power, and are generally more affordable. These are “watches” in the way that iPhones are “phones,” meaning they’re actually multifunctional little computers encased in a diminutive package. Basically, those were your options. You were either dialed in to mechanical wizardry or you weren’t. And thus, for decades, all was dull and dandy in the insular little world of horology. But about…

My wife and I were out for a drive recently and saw two boys pedaling their bicycles down the street. “That’s something you don’t see too often,” she said. “Kids riding bicycles. Usually, it’s adults.” I have several theories about why life today isn’t as magical as it was when I was a kid, including the absence of front porches and the presence of cellphones. Now my wife’s observation has caused me to add two more causes to the list — kids don’t ride bicycles like they used to, and adults ought to stay home instead of wearing funny clothes and clogging the street with their bicycles. They pass me on our country road when I’m out for a walk. I smile and say hello, but they press on with grim…